Privacy News for February 4, 2022

Privacy and the Pandemic

• Rise of tracing apps highlights threats to civil liberties | Financial Times
• History offers a cautionary tale for biometric covid tracking systems | Washington Post

Government Surveillance

• Mayor London Breed’s Tenderloin surveillance push ignores history, crime stats | San Francisco Chronicle
• NSO offered US mobile security firm ‘bags of cash’, whistleblower claims | Guardian
• Israeli police find ‘legally debatable’ use of spyware by investigators | Guardian
• Post-9/11 surveillance work looms over Biden’s Homeland pick | Bloomberg Government

Laws, Legislation, and Litigation

• Celebrating National Data Privacy Day by noting recent developments in the law | JD Supra
• Patchwork legislation for biometrics gets patchier | BiometricUpdate.com

Biometric Privacy

• Treasury reconsiders IRS use of ID.me facial recognition amid privacy concerns | Engadget
  • Why the prospect of the IRS using facial recognition is so alarming | Slate
  • Facial recognition for all online IRS accounts: What’s up with ID.me? | CNET
  • ‘A big deal, and it’s bad’: IRS facial scanning plan raises privacy fears | Boston Globe
  • Government agencies are tapping a facial recognition company to prove you’re you —  here’s why that raises concerns about privacy, accuracy and fairness | The Conversation
• Watch out for the facial recognition overlords | Washington Post
• Innovative Technology’s age verification to be piloted by UK government for alcohol sales | BiometricUpdate.com

Surveillance Capitalism

• Major media outlets that use invasive user tracking are lobbying against regulation | Intercept

Encryption & Online Anonymity

• Math that helped solve Fermat’s Theorem now safeguards the digital world | New York Times

This Week in Data Breaches and Leaks

• Data breach alert: Farmers Telephone Cooperative, Inc. (FTC) | JD Supra
• RIPTA data breach affected about 20,000 people | Security Week